Woodrow Wilson - The new freedom abroad

Among all the statesmen of the modern era, Woodrow Wilson stands out as
the preeminent champion of liberal humanitarian international ideals. He
believed, to the point of religious commitment, that the United States had
been created to serve mankind. He detested imperialism and the
exploitation of helpless people by the strong and ruthless. He believed in
the right of all peoples to govern themselves and in the peaceful
settlement of international disputes. He abhorred the use of violence to
protect American material interests abroad. Secretary of State Bryan, who
shared all of Wilson's views, was easily the leading opponent of
imperialism in the United States and was also in the vanguard of the
movement to advance peace through arbitration and conciliation. Both
Wilson and Bryan were determined to make a new beginning in foreign policy
in 1913.

With Wilson's blessing, Bryan, in 1913 and 1914, negotiated with
thirty nations—including Great Britain, France, and
Italy—treaties that established elaborate machinery to prevent war.
Additional evidence of Wilson and Bryan's intentions in foreign
policy came early in the new administration, with a forthright repudiation
of the "dollar diplomacy" of the Taft administration. At the
insistence of the State Department, an American banking group had been
admitted in 1911 to an international consortium to finance the
construction of the Hukuang Railway in China. Wilson, on 18 March 1913,
announced that he could not approve the loan agreement because it would
lead to unacceptable outside interference in Chinese domestic affairs, and
so the consortium collapsed. Then, on 2 May 1913, Wilson extended
diplomatic recognition to the fledgling Republic of China without prior
consultation with the other great powers.

A crisis in Japanese-American relations erupted in the spring of 1913,
when the legislature of California began to deliberate a bill that forbade
persons "ineligible to citizenship" (that is, Orientals) to
own land in the state. Wilson sent Bryan to Sacramento to plead with the
governor and leaders of the legislature of California to avoid this open
insult to the Japanese. But Wilson and Bryan could not budge the
intransigent Californians; moreover, the latter put the president and
secretary of state in an awkward position when they added to the bill a
provision that declared null and void any part of the measure that
violated the treaty obligations of the United States.

The Japanese government protested strongly, and there was talk of war on
both sides, particularly among American naval leaders; but Wilson and
Bryan's conciliatory diplomacy defused the crisis at once. Wilson
and Bryan also seemed prepared, in spite of all the obvious political
risks at home, to negotiate a treaty with Japan to guarantee the mutual
right of landownership. Then, in the early weeks of 1915, a new crisis
broke out when the Japanese attempted to impose upon China a treaty that
would have made that country a virtual protectorate of Japan. Wilson
resisted this assault upon Chinese independence and the Open Door so
vigorously that the Japanese gave up their extreme demands.

Another demonstration of Wilson's determination to do the
"right" thing in international relations in spite of heavy
political risks came out in a controversy with Great Britain in 1913 and
1914. With the Panama Canal nearing completion, Congress, in August 1912,
passed legislation that exempted American ships engaged in the coastwise
trade from the payment of tolls for use of the canal. The Democratic
platform of 1912 had also endorsed such exemption. The British government,
soon after Taft signed the Panama Canal Act, sent to Washington a solemn
note that argued that the exemption violated the Anglo-American
Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901, which stipulated that the Panama Canal
should be open on equal terms to the ships of all nations.

Wilson was convinced, even before his inauguration, that the British were
right, but he did not dare to act until the success of his domestic
program was assured. Then, on 5 March 1914, Wilson went before a joint
session of Congress and asked for repeal of the exemption provision.
"The large thing to do is the only thing we can afford to
do," he said, "a voluntary withdrawal from a position
everywhere questioned and misunderstood."

It was actually one of Wilson's most courageous moves during his
presidency. The entire Democratic leadership of the House of
Representatives opposed him, and he risked his leadership of Congress and
his party by repudiating a prominent plank of the platform of 1912. The
British ambassador in Washington believed that Wilson faced certain
defeat. However, the House and the Senate approved repeal of the exemption
provision on 31 March and 11 June 1914, by votes of 247–162 and
50–35, respectively. "When I think of the obstacles you have
encountered and overcome in this conflict for the national honor,"
one friend wrote to Wilson on 16 June 1914, "the victory seems
colossal." It was also a victory over anglo-phobes and chauvinists,
and it secured Wilson's leadership of the Democratic party in
Congress.

Wilson and Bryan wanted ardently to draw the two continents of the western
hemisphere into intimate economic and diplomatic relationships. As a first
step, they negotiated a treaty with the Colombian government to repair the
moral and diplomatic damage done by Theodore Roosevelt in 1903, when he
encouraged and supported the Panamanian "revolution" that
tore the province of Panama from Colombia. The Treaty of Bogotá,
signed on 6 April 1914, not only awarded Colombia an indemnity of $25
million, for the loss of Panama; it also expressed the "sincere
regret" of the United States that anything should have happened to
impair good relations between the two countries. The sight of a great
power apologizing to a small country for a wrong done in the past evoked
warm approval throughout Latin America. However, Theodore
Roosevelt's friends in the Senate were able to block ratification.
The Harding administration, in 1921, negotiated a new treaty, which was
ratified, that awarded Colombia the $25 million but omitted the apology.

Wilson's great goal in Latin America was the negotiation of a pact
to unite all the American republics in an alliance binding them to respect
one another's territorial integrity, guarantee one another's
political independence, and settle all disputes among themselves by
peaceful methods. Such a treaty would in effect have mutualized the Monroe
Doctrine, and Wilson, in an address to a Pan-American conference in
Washington on 6 January 1916, announced his intention to take this
then-radical step. The Monroe Doctrine, he said, was proclaimed by the
United States on its own authority; it was a unilateral policy, and it did
not restrain the United States in the western hemisphere. Doubts about
this matter had to be removed and would be removed by the Pan-American
pact, for it was based upon the "handsome principle of
self-restraint and respect for the rights of everybody."
Wilson's hopes for the Pan-American pact were spoiled by the
opposition of Chile, which had an old border dispute with Peru that it
would not submit to arbitration.

Whatever their thoughts were about Latin American policy in general,
Wilson and Bryan (and subsequent secretaries of state to 1921) regarded
defense of the Caribbean area and of the Panama Canal as one of the main
objectives of the foreign policy of the United States. They tried to
inculcate respect for democratic government among the leaders of the
countries in the Caribbean; they also refused, insofar as it was within
their power to do so, to permit American business interests to obtain
concessions and American bankers loans that would unfairly exploit the
people of the Caribbean basin. Nonetheless, Wilson and his secretaries of
state deemed the stability of the area to be absolutely essential to the
security of the United States and were prepared to take all measures
necessary to guarantee that stability.

Bryan continued the Taft administration's support of a corrupt and
conservative regime in Nicaragua, not by armed intervention, which Taft
had resorted to, but by a treaty that provided for the payment of $3
million to Nicaragua for an option on its canal route and stipulated (at
the insistence of the Nicaraguan government) that the United States might
intervene in Nicaragua to preserve order, protect property, and defend
Nicaraguan independence. The latter provision was unacceptable to
anti-imperialists in the Senate. Only when the provision was removed from
the treaty in 1916 would they consent to its ratification.

The republic of Haiti had always contrived to preserve its independence,
but it came on evil times in 1914 and 1915 as governments fell in quick
succession to revolutionists with their eyes on the custom-houses. The
only remedy seemed to be American control of the Haitian customs, but the
Haitians refused to take this strong medicine when Wilson sent a
commission to Haiti to offer it. An enraged mob murdered the Haitian
president in Port-au-Prince on 27 July 1915; anarchy and starvation
threatened. Wilson was reluctant to intervene, but he thought that he had
no choice but to rescue the hapless Haitian people. As he wrote to Lansing
on 4 August 1915, "I suppose there is nothing for it but to take
the bull by the horns and restore order." American marines and
sailors occupied Port-au-Prince on 28 July 1915. The American navy
proceeded to pacify the country, to set up a puppet government, and to
impose upon the Haitian Senate a treaty that made Haiti a protectorate of
the United States.

The United States had collected and disbursed the customs revenues of the
Dominican Republic since 1905, but Wilson's warnings and
Bryan's exhortations failed to prevent the same fatal cycle of
revolutions in the Dominican Republic that had devastated Haiti. To Wilson
and his advisers, there seemed to be no alternative but to impose peace
upon the country. American military forces occupied Santo Domingo, the
Dominican capital, on 15 May 1916, and established a military government
in the following November.

American marines occupied the Dominican Republic until 1924 and Haiti
until 1934. They put an end to revolutions and built schools, roads, and
sanitary facilities, and the Dominican and Haitian peoples enjoyed greater
peace and protection of their lives and property than they had known
before.

Denmark, in desperate straits on account of World War I, indicated in 1915
that it might be willing to sell its West Indian islands, with their
potential for naval bases, to the United States if the price was right.
Wilson, worried by the possibility that Germany might, by one means or
another, force Denmark to cede it the Danish West Indies, was in no mood
to haggle over the price of even run-down real estate. The two governments
agreed upon a purchase price of $25 million; the treaty was signed on 4
August 1916 and ratified on 17 January 1917; and an American naval
commander accepted transfer of the islands from the Danish governor on 31
March 1917.

Wilson fought his first battle against imperialism while dealing with
events in Mexico, the country in which imperialism had reached its apogee.
Porfirio Díaz, dictator of Mexico since 1877, had given away much
of the birthright of the Mexican people to foreigners by 1910. Reformers,
led by Francisco Indalecio Madero, drove the senile Díaz into exile
and installed Madero in the presidential palace in November 1911. But
Madero proved to be an inept ruler, and when the inevitable
counterrevolution began on 9 February 1913, the head of the army,
Victoriano Huerta, joined the rebels; had Madero murdered; and assumed
power as acting president on 18 February. Huerta perpetrated his treachery
with the full knowledge and, to some degree, the complicity of Henry Lane
Wilson, the American ambassador in Mexico City. Great Britain, Germany,
and France, whose citizens owned extensive properties in Mexico,
recognized Huerta as the constitutional de facto president, as did Japan
and many other nations.

This, then, was the situation in Mexico when Woodrow Wilson took the oath
of office on 4 March 1913. Wilson recoiled in disgust at what he called
"a government of butchers" and was distressed beyond
description when he learned a few months later about Henry Lane
Wilson's complicity in Huerta's coup. Woodrow
Wilson's goal from March to October 1913 was clear, consistent,
and, initially, naive. It was the reestablishment of constitutional
government in Mexico through free elections in which Huerta would not be a
candidate for president. Wilson's only weapons during those months
were moral pressure and the influence that inhered in his power to extend
recognition or to withhold it. Thus, he recalled Henry Lane Wilson and, in
August 1913, sent John Lind, a former Democratic governor of Minnesota, to
Mexico City to offer what amounted to de facto recognition and
Washington's approval of a large loan to the Mexican government if
Huerta would agree to hold an "early and free" election. The
American president also asked for an immediate armistice in the civil war
that had begun soon after Huerta's coup, when a large group of
Madero's followers, called Constitutionalists, had taken to the
field under Venustiano Carranza, governor of the state of Coahuila.

Huerta bluffed and feinted, but by then he had the outright support of the
British government and no intention of abdicating. On the contrary, he
arrested most of the members of the Chamber of Deputies and instituted an
outright military dictatorship on 10 October 1913.

Huerta's move forced Wilson to adopt a policy that took account of
the hard realities of the Mexican situation. Support of the usurper was
simply not an option with Wilson. There was the possibility of cooperation
with Carranza, but the First Chief, as he was called, said plainly that he
and his followers did not want Wilson's help, had no interest in
"constitutional" elections at this time, and were determined
to purge Mexico by the sword. Wilson did not shrink from accepting the
logic of his implacable opposition to Huerta. He announced his policy to
the powers on 24 November:

The present policy of the Government of the United States is to isolate
General Huerta entirely; to cut him off from foreign sympathy and aid
and from domestic credit, whether moral or material, and so to force him
out. It hopes and believes that isolation will accomplish this end, and
shall await the results without irritation or impatience. If General
Huerta does not retire by force of circumstances, it will become the
duty of the United States to use less useful peaceful means to put him
out.

Wilson could write so confidently because he had just forced the British
government to withdraw support from Huerta. When the Constitutionalist
campaign faltered, Wilson, on 3 February 1914, lifted the arms embargo
against the Constitutionalists that Taft had imposed a year before. Most
important, Wilson accepted the Mexican Revolution upon its own terms.
Settlement by a civil war was a terrible thing, he wrote in a circular
note to the powers on 31 January 1914, "but it must come now
whether we wish it or not." From this moment until the end of his
administration, Wilson was committed personally and morally to the cause
of the Mexican Revolution, "a revolution as profound as that which
occurred in France." Wilson's support of the
Constitutionalists caused the Roman Catholic Church, the bankers, and the
large landowners in Mexico to rally to Huerta's standard, so that
the dictator was actually stronger by the spring of 1914 than he had been
when Wilson hurled his threats at him. There was no choice now for Wilson
but to resort to a show of force. But how could he do this without making
open war, which Congress and the American people would probably not
support and which Carranza would probably resist? The opportunity came
when a Huertista officer arrested the crew of a boat from the USS
Dolphin
at Tampico on 9 April 1914 and the commander of the American fleet in
Mexican waters demanded a formal apology and a salute to the American flag
with twenty-one guns. When (fortunately for the American president) Huerta
balked at rendering the salute, Wilson, on 21 April 1914, ordered the
fleet to seize Veracruz, Mexico's largest port. Wilson expected no
resistance because the Huertista commander at Vera-cruz had promised to
withdraw from the city before the Americans landed. He did so, but cadets
from the Mexican naval academy and others resisted bravely, and 126
Mexicans and 19 Americans died before the Americans secured their control
of Veracruz.

When Carranza denounced the American invasion as angrily as Huerta, what
could Wilson do but launch a strike toward Mexico City? But he was
determined to avoid general war with Mexico. Wilson was saved from this
dilemma by Huerta's acceptance of an offer by the ABC
powers—Argentina, Brazil, and Chile—to mediate the
controversy. American and Mexican commissioners met at Niagara Falls,
Canada, from 20 May to 2 July 1914. Wilson had no intention of submitting
to a genuine mediation; on the contrary, he prolonged the charade at
Niagara Falls until the Constitutionalists had beaten the weakened,
isolated, and weary Huerta. The dictator fled to Spain on 15 July, and
Carranza occupied Mexico City on 20 August 1914.

The revolutionary forces had divided even before Carranza rode into Mexico
City on his white horse. Carranza faced two bitter foes—Francisco
("Pancho") Villa, former brigand and now commander of the
Division of the North, and Emiliano Zapata, leader of a peasant revolt in
the state of Morelos, south of Mexico City. Villa and Zapata dominated a
convention of revolutionary generals that met at Aguascalientes in October
and November 1914. It deposed Carranza and installed a puppet regime in
Mexico City. Carranza and the divisions loyal to him retired to Veracruz,
which Wilson had recently evacuated.

Wilson tried to persuade the two factions to unite; when this effort
failed, he simply withdrew from active interference in Mexican affairs and
awaited the outcome of the new civil war. Bryan tried to persuade Wilson
to recognize the Villa-Zapata government in Mexico City, but Wilson
refused to take sides. Then, when Carranza's chief general,
Álvaro Obregón, nearly destroyed the Division of the North
in April 1915, several counter-revolutionary Mexican leaders appeared in
Washington to seek American assistance. Wilson would have nothing to do
with them. As the summer wore on and Carranza gained strength, Robert
Lansing, who had replaced Bryan in June and who regarded Carranza as a
dire threat to foreign interests in Mexico, concocted a scheme to
eliminate the First Chief through Pan-American mediation of the Mexican
civil war. Wilson turned Lansing's scheme aside and accorded de
facto recognition to the Carranza regime on 19 October 1915.

Villa, who had retreated northward with a small but loyal force,
retaliated against Wilson's recognition of Carranza by murdering
sixteen Americans in northern Mexico on 11 January 1916. When this act
failed to provoke Wilson into military intervention, Villa struck at an
army camp at Columbus, New Mexico, on 9 March 1916, burning the town and
killing nineteen inhabitants. Wilson did the least that he could in the
circumstances: he sent a force of some seven thousand men under General
John Joseph Pershing to capture Villa and bring him to justice.

Before he sent Pershing into Mexico, Wilson thought that he had obtained
Carranza's tacit consent to the entry of what was called the
Punitive Expedition. The problem was the wily Villa, who eluded Pershing
and drew him 350 miles southward into Mexico. Carranza, who probably would
have been very glad if Pershing had captured Villa, now had to deal with a
Mexican public opinion outraged by Pershing's move into the heart
of Mexico. In response, the First Chief demanded that Wilson withdraw the
Punitive Expedition from Mexican soil. Wilson did withdraw the expedition
to the northernmost part of Mexico, but fighting broke out on 21 June
1916, when an American cavalry force attacked a detachment of Mexican
regulars at Carrizal. First reports told of a treacherous ambush by the
Mexicans, and Wilson wrote an address in which he asked Congress for
authority to occupy all of northern Mexico. But both Carranza and Wilson
desperately wanted to avoid war. Wilson cried out in a speech on 30 June
1916: "Do you think the glory of America would be enhanced by a war
of conquest? Do you think that any act of violence by a powerful nation
like this against a weak distracted neighbor would reflect distinction
upon the annals of the United States?"

Carranza, on 4 July, proposed that a joint high commission be appointed to
investigate and recommend, and Wilson jumped at the chance to seek a
diplomatic solution. The commission met at various places in the United
States from 6 September 1916 to 15 January 1917, when it broke up because
Carranza would accept no agreement that did not provide for the complete
withdrawal of all of Pershing's force on a specific date, a promise
the Americans were unwilling to make. Wilson, determined to escape from
the Mexican imbroglio, called the Punitive Expedition back to the United
States on 18 January 1917. Then Wilson sent a new ambassador to Mexico
and, on 3 March, accorded de facto recognition to Carranza and the
constitutional government that he had just established at
Querétaro.

Through all the confused period in Mexican-American relations from 1914 to
1917, Wilson prevented any counterrevolutionary movements from being
hatched on American soil and kept a close watch over American bankers and
businessmen who, he suspected, wanted to take advantage of a helpless
nation. Over and over, Wilson insisted that the Mexican people had the
right to solve their problems in their own way. Ironically, the man who
provoked Mexican ill will by his occupation of Veracruz and the dispatch
of the Punitive Expedition was in fact the chief defender and guardian of
the Mexican Revolution.